Ratings by MoonBird

I so wanted to like this game. I really did. But it was impossible. Really was.

1. The real drag starts right from the opening screen. You are forced to hover and search the hidden menu items from the screen. I think that the developer thought it would be fun. Well it’s bloody seriously NOT.

2. The game doesn’t stretch to full screen properly, it leaves two thick bars on both sides of the screen.

3. Hotspots lack names. In the beginning, when there was need to put on some clothes, I clicked the shoes. The character blurts out: “I’ll want to put on some clothes first” ... well okay, I’m sorry as heck that I didn’t know that shoes are not clothes, and even if I’d been able to foresee that, I couldn’t tell if I was clicking the shoes or the shirt, ‘cause I didn’t know where the hotstpot changes to another.

4. Voice acting was almost inaudible and the sound effects really loud, and there was no setting to adjust their volume separately.

5. When I finally decided to stand up from the bed, there was 3 or 4 hints as to what to do next. Like… seriously. I’m not 4 years old and I’m trying to play adventure game here. There’s no need to hold my hand so tightly. And the next hints just came…. one… after….another…. ...and I couldn’t know if the character was done talking or not.

That was the time I hit the quit button and ran away from this game. I just couldn’t take any more.

On top of that, it costs over 10€ and it’s only part 1. I don’t even want to know how short it is for the price, but I really doubt that it justifies the expensive price tag.

Where do I begin? From the beginning?

The first thing you’ll be facing in this game is an unskippable tutorial, where you’ll be stumbling around in complete darkness trying to figure how to get some light. A BIG no-no how to start the game.

Interface is awkward and needlessly difficult to use, voice acting is poor at best and unbearable at worst. General tone of emotions is bland and most of the characters are pretty one-note. Timing of the dialogue lines would have also needed a lot more work. Sometimes the line changes abruptly, leaving unnatural, glitchy feeling, and the volume for the voice acting is definitely way too low even when set to 100% from the menu.

There’s also something horribly wrong with the rendering of the dialogue font. When the text moves in the screen, it gets somehow blurry and torn until it stops again.

The starting screen was black about a minute, and the main menu became accessible only after I pressed the space bar, which tells me that the game is buggy right from the beginning. The conversations are long-winded and unfortunately deadly boring.

Inventory could be more easily accessible, and the sound effect when opening and closing it, is completely futile. When the inventory is open, you cannot interact with the rest of the game, which feels odd. I also disliked the change of action for the right mouse button. In the demo you could look things with it, which added a lot of feeling and descriptions to the environment. Now it only shows hotspots, which is unnecessary, because space bar does the same.

Speaking of hotspots, I sadly noticed that there were a LOT more of them in the Yellow Mask. This means that Many of the hotspots were removed in this full game, which is really beyond my understanding. Why downgrade things from the demo?? I think it’s just plain stupidity and despising of the paying customers.

There’s no real puzzles, 90% of the dialogue borders on the knife’s edge on being just painfully boring or complete nonsense, quest list shows things that cannot be done anymore, and the implementation of the symbol puzzle in the cave (actually the only real puzzle here) was purely idiotic. If you happen to give a wrong name for even one of the symbols, you have to load a saved game, or replay the whole scene from the autosave, which means of skipping some 5 minutes worth of dialogue every time. Otherwise, you’re stuck and the only option is to die. What kind of senseless punishment for the player is that supposed to be!? One single puzzle, and you manage to make a mess out of it. Unbelivable!

Walking (and also running) around is tedious and slow. Double clicking the exits would have been deadly necessary here. Moving from place to another takes lion’s share of the playtime, which can be considered a real drag, especially when every other moment in the game is spent with endless and uninteresting conversations with voice actors ranging from horrible to bearable.

This is all quite sad, really, because the game has such a great potential what comes to background graphics. They are actually the only thing here, than I can give full credit for. Everything else was either uninteresting, badly designed, unfinished, unpolished, broken, buggy or didn’t make much sense.

If you can get it for maximum of 2 or 3 euros, it could serve a purpose for being a digital study book titled “How to ruin an interesting premise”. But DO. NOT. PAY. the full price for it. ever. It’s really not worth it.

Some 10 years back, I started a forum topic here in Adventuregamers.com, that I would like to play a game, which takes place in an abandoned environment, where you can move from place to place, feel, see and get the vibes of urban exploration. At that time, those kind of games just simply didn’t exist.

Then came INFRA.

Guys. I’m telling you. For me this was certainly a gaming dream come true. Let me just say, that i’m utterly, thorougly, and completely so freaking tired of games, that include demons, zombies, spirits, wizards, magic, scifi, or other unworldly, fictional elements. They do not interest me that much to start with, and when every single game is full of them, you just long for something else for a change.

That, my dear friends, is INFRA.

Let me get this straight. I love reality. Mundane tasks and exploration do not bore me. Quite the contrary. Tension and excitement can be built without cheap scares, ghosts or other such nonsense. For me, the feeling of reality and the knowledge, that this world could be real and all of this could be really happening, adds a whole lot more of emotional charge and excitement to it, than anything else.

I also hate too short games, which are over before they even properly start. Fortunately, INFRA, is NOT one of those. It’s lenghty, and yet, always interesting, and really moving forward. Some critics say that this game lacks direction and clues to the puzzles. Sure. I agree with that. But for me, it isn’t a problem. I don’t like games that are too hand-holding. After all, it’s a game from a viewpoint of Structural Analyst. You are expected to know how to do your work, for crying out loud. Also, INFRA rewards you greatly, when you achieve things. And the puzzles really aren’t that hard anyway. They do NOT contain any complex alien code cracking and they are not based on a knowledge outside the game. They are merely flipping switches and turning valves in order to get forward. Still they are inventive, and clever, and never, ever feel out of place.

INFRA’s world is really a beautiful one, and yet, still run-down and partly decayed. Overlength was mentioned as a con in the original review of this game. I have to disagree there. I’ve clocked over 20 hours of gameplay, and the intensity simply doesn’t die. I’m always waiting for a new location and puzzles.

This is one of the best games ever made. Game engine is smooth and clever. Everything works beautifully. If I had to find some points of critic, there are two things that come to mind:

First; The voice acting from Mark is quite bad, but fortunately there is not a huge amount of dialogue.

Second; Camera and flashlight batteries die way too quickly. Sure, there are a lot of them around to find, but still.

Those 2 small things are so minor, though, that it doesn’t change a thing. INFRA is certainly the shining crown of solitary exploration games. If you also happen to like abandoned environments, all the better. This is definetly a game not to miss.

And by the way: It comes from my own country! I’ve rarely been so proud of FINLAND! Go Loiste Interactive!

Rock-solid five stars from here! <3

The setting was outstanding, and the game seemed too good to be true. Unfortunately, that also was pretty much the case here.

First steps were fascinating and thrilling, the eerieness and foreboding atmosphere were there. After a while, though, first thing that started to annoy me, was the clunky gameplay mechanics and extremely badly designed interface system. A lot of clicking in the menus and in the map, which is a necessity in this game.

Next, I thought that I would be able to find my companion, who was messaging me, but that never happened. Using things to environment was partly satisfying, but started to get boring after a while, as you backtrack and try to remember where have you seen something you need to interact with.

All the digital recorders you find, try to give you a backstory, but I didn’t find them interesting at all.

Still, the biggest disappointment for me was the shortness. The game took me approximately an hour or so, maybe even less. I get that there are 10 different kind of endings, but I really don’t feel like interacting with the same boring drilling, welding and detonating tasks for a second time.

Add some technical issues to the mix, and you have two stars at the absolute most. It’s literally a crying shame, because this game really promised more than it gave. The setting was extraordinary, though and I definitely hope that there would be more games, that play in the abandoned environments and demolition projects.

The main problem is, that there is actually nothing to really do in this game. It’s an interactive novel in the true sense of the word. It’s click - dialogue - click - dialogue - change of location - click - dialogue… The game doesn’t even provide an inventory, so practically you can’t use anything to anywhere!

Now, usually I don’t think that games can contain too much dialogue, but this time I ...actually did. Though i’m not really certain is it the amount of it, or the fact that the conversations are unimaginative and quite pointless in many occations. This combined to the interactive novel -concept, makes this matter even more pressing.

The voice acting is okay for the most part, but it certainly isn’t the shining virtue of this game. Some characters are actually quite painful to listen to, and, unfortunately Bill is one of them, and we’ll hear him a LOT. Best actor is the one providing the voice for Addy. She’s emotinal and vibrant.

The best score of Lamplight City comes certainly from the heartwarming vintage graphics and nice soundwork. The cases are interesting enough, but the detective playground is appallingly small, and the conversation choises really tend to take away rather than give, like the game’s official reviewer said.

In the end, its a nice game with overflowing amount of dialogue and nothing to actually do, but on the other hand, its certainly easy on the eyes and ears.

+ Still visually very beautiful game
+ Splendid interface. Light, reliable, trustable, clean, almost perfect
+ Technically solid game, no bugs
+ voice-acting has improved over the Puridas Cordis
+ Some really emotional scenes!
+ Still pretty nice animations and lovely zoom-effect!

Cons:

- Volume problems. Sometimes too loud, sometimes almost inaudible.
- Intro doesn’t strike. Starting the 3rd part of the series with a controls for complete stranger just is not fun.
- Shortest of the trilogy. Not too short, fortunately
- Atmosphere lacks something. Toom much abstract story twists and turns and wondering in the dream world.
- Couple of hair-raisingly bad puzzles

Although it has it’s flaws, the SF3 was still largely positive experience. Well above the average, for sure.

The musical score is quite nice, although there are moments when the voice-acting tends to be drown beneath the orchestral thunder. This is a massive problem, since the speech-volume cannot be adjusted separately. The game has only one volume-knob. That is a definite mention in the cons-section.

Talking about the voice-acting, I have some good news, but unfortunately some bad news too. Let’s start with a good ones. Yesterday includes a brilliant voice-acting to every single character in the gameworld. There’s no weak performances. So what could possibly go wrong? Well for one thing: The voice-acting covers the dialoques. Only. Scene-descriptions and everything else is plain text. With an absolute silence of a Sunday evening in the wolly-hat-factory. Sound effetcs are ok in my book, nothing spectacular, but nothing bad either.

Interface is rather succesful one. Although the game-saving process is a little too difficult and complex. The volume-issues with voice and music mentioned earlier are - of course - an interface issue too. Unlike so many other players i’ve talked to, I really liked the new inventory. I thought it was easy to use, plain, and simple. Hint-system is impressively well done in this game.

The atmosphere of Yesterday is ok, I think. The story is rather good, but there are some moments when it really gets simply uninteresting. The music and certain abandoned-like environments are the thing that kept me playing and helped me over the not-so-exciting story points. However I thought the plot was way too confusing and so numbing with a religious passion and “endless life” -cliches that it really just did not manage to carry the whole thing to the end.

I just don’t know what has striked the Pendulo Studios. Is it a laziness or what, but the character animations are practically nonexistent. Characters teleport from one place to another even when it’s completely unnecessary and it really wakes a primal fury in you to throw your game in the dephts of hell and hope that it will burn so completely that the developers would forget it never existed. When the character is left still, there is absolutely no animation. It is simply a paper doll. It doesn’t move its arms, legs, eyebrows, mouth, ... nothing. It just stands there like a block of wood. Un-for-give-ab-le.

Technically speaking, the game is quite good. There were some cases, where you had to click to get the text forward, and then there were autoscrolling in some points. It was quite an annoyance, as it means that you can accidentally click the autoscrolling text with a result of a missing sentences and possibly an important clue amongst them. There were no major bugs, but one time I experienced a missing cursor. However after a while, it got back in the screen magically. Not quite perfectly tehcnically polished, but on the other hand, nothing big to moan about.

There’s one complainment that is clearly the biggest one. The shortness. I’ve got a feeling, that one year after another, we see shorter and shorter games from Pendulo. Runaway-series reflects this thing very well: It’s length has decreased steadily from 1 to 3 and with this game, pendulo has finally hit the rock-bottom. Had the game been any shorter, I could have stated without exaggerating at all, that I have played longer demos than Yesterday. At least half more to it’s length, and we would have been talking about tolerable amount of playing time. And oh yeah.. the easyness doesn’t exactly help there.

The dialoques are bearable, but the bad translation issues abound here and there. The lack of voice-acting in the descriptions is one thing that reduces the joy a little. On the other hand the descriptions are written in the good old “you see this - you do that” - format. Rather cool, and oldschool. Once again: Not enough to write home about, but simply just above bearable. The earlier mentioned - partly automatic dialoque scrolling is also quite rage-inducing.

Intro is acceptable, but doesn’t strike very deep. An idea about the homeless people in the beginning is an excellent hook, but unfortunately the story manages skips that subject almost perfectly. A real shame. In a way, intro promises you some things the game doesn’t actually have. That’s not very nice, Pendulo!

Dying in the game is not possible, and you cannot make irreversible actions, either.

SUMMARY

Pendulo Studios has clearly started to slip in its soapy way. Before I even played this game myself, some details in the trailers and videos got me strongly worried. It’s a simple conclusion, that Yesterday isn’t very good game. It has some improvements over the earlier games, however, and in fact they saved the game from a total catastrohe. Pros-section contains only 4 keypoints, whereas con-section is sadly much longer: 10 keypoints. And they were also major ones, allright.

+ Voice acting is great in the parts that it exists
+ Inventory is a massive improvement
+ Pendulo has finally fixed the awful dialoque-trees
+ Hint-system is ingenious!

- Did I get a demo? Was this really a whole game? WAY. TOO. SHORT.
- Voice-acting only in the dialoques
- Character animations are not good, nor they are bad: they are NONEXISTENT.
- Hotspot names are missing, which leads to random clicking
- Too much attacking mini-windows in the screen
- Translation issues. For example: “When you pulling the suitcase” ...ewh..
- Music attacks over the voice acting and throws it down the Niagara falls. Only one volume-setting in the whole game
- Asynchronization between text and voice-acting
- Small assortment of little bugs in the speech pack (sentences are partly double-played sometimes)
- Plot is too confusing
- Raving about the spiritual world is really annoying.

I really hope that if Pendulo still continues to make games, they put the aim a little bit higher. These kind of brain-farts - where voice-acting is only partly done, character animations are practically nonexistent, hotspots are left without a name, a little mini-windows pop up in the screen like junk mail, and to top it all: translations are unforgivably bad, coupled with a broken font here and there - should be left undone. Let’s really, really hope better luck next time. Play Yesterday with your own risk. I can’t recommend.

Mata Hari takes place in the beginning of the 19th century europe, Paris, Berlin, Monaco and Madrid. Music supports these locations excellently, although it will repeat itself after some while, because there is not too much of compositions. But powerful, classical tunes fit in this game like that famous hand into a glove.

In these days, I have often critisized - especially new and newish - games about the poor quality of voice acting. Mata Hari manages to be best acted game - best in a long while. From the present-day games, maybe only Still Life reaces the same line of quality at this matter. Actors have been carefully chosen for each character. All intonations are belivable and just right. Also the sound effects are pleasant and they actually sound really natrual. Therefore it’s easy to give full score from this point.

Mata Hari’s interface is quite similar to Black Mirror, but in this game, you will drag icons over the desired item or character. It’s quite confusing, though, that the conversation icons, and inventory objects are really similar, and you cannot always tell them apart. On top of that, they are plain icons, and the shape and size of the object doesn’t come clear from them. What’s more, there isn’t voice acted description from them. But aside from that, everything works fine with the interface and after getting used to it, one will eventually have a liking to it.

The fact, that the game takes place in last century’s europe, gives it a certain charm and Mata Hari is really interesting as a character. Also game’s theme is interesting, even though the story tends to be interupted by too many frustrating minigames. One could have thought to get more out from the atmoshpere, but the fact, that the script holds together very well and is easy to follow, just about saves the day.

It’s clear from the start, that Cranberry productions has put a lot of effort to quality animation. Not a single move of the chracacter is broken, but fluent and bendy. The trees are swinging in the wind so belivably, that at times, the game felt more like a movie, than an actual game. Clouds move gently in the sky, flags wave in the wind. Animation is therefore extremely well done in all respects. There is absolutely no complaints here.

Concerning the technical side, Mata Hari is trustworthy product. During the play, there were no bugs, and I could spot only one miss-spelled sentence in comparsion to dialogue, all worked really well. When the test plays are made thoroughly and the final touches are made carefully, there is a possibility to make fine quality products like this.

Mata Hari is disapointingly short game. Four cities plus few another places. I believe I needn’t to highlight this more than to say, that there sould have been really much more to explore. They have tried to make it longer with all kinds of minigames and puzzles, but failed, because they are way too easy in comparsion to other games of the genre. And there is no inventory-based puzzles at all. Straightly speaking: Mata Hari screams at least a half more to its length, because now big part of it just consists of running around and backtracking to places with train and taxi. It was frustrating.

Dialoque is extremely interesting, thanks to brilliant voice acting, but also to entertaining script. The only thing, that has to be critisized is - yet again - the asynchronization with text and voices during the intro and cutscenes. It isn’t something that should offend too much, just a mainor annoyance as the cutscenes do not really play a big part in this game.

Intro is actually the first part of the cutscenes, it’s short, gets to the point and is generously quite well done, but fails to get you jumping from exitement. Cutscenes are presented with similar style, there are no characters visible, only the narrator who makes an interview with another person. It works quite well, I must admit.

Mata hari will be endangered many times during the adventure, but dying in the game is not possible.

Summary

Cranberry productions is new developer, and everything looks bright for their future concerning the product development and quality of the game. Mata Hari is really interesting and - in a way - highly charming aquintance. The biggest stumbling-block is the lack of length, which overshadows another qualities of the game. However, 3 and half stars indicate, that this wasn’t miserable attempt at all. Quite the contrary. 

+ Best graphics to the day. Speeclessly beautiful
+ Best voice acting in years. Definitely at TOP-10
+ Brilliant animations, especially the little details in the background
+ Quality game, no bugs
+ Good story, good script, fine completion
+ Music fits the game well
+ Interface is clean and easy, regardless the new innovations

- Way too short. Where’s the another half?
- Asynchronous text and voices during the cutscenes
- Intro could have been longer
- Quite bland and melancholic atmoshpere at points.
- Lack of inventory puzzles
- Backtracking with train and taxi
- Too much little minigames

The magic barrier of 90 points was just about out of reach, but that was primarly due to lack of length. Every detail of this game reflects the high quality. Technically, voice actingly, graphically, musically, trough animations and in every other respect. In some other review I remember to have said that nowadays, there is this syndrome of really good, but short games. I think I will repeat myself and once again, full of sadness, I must admit, that yes - unfortunately that was exactly the case. And is still. Mata Hari is, however, game worth testing out. Let’s hope that the developer will do something more lengthy and challencing in the future. This was good first work!